Glossary

Behavior: What people do, including the production of verbal utterances. Case notes: Notes used by health professionals that record a patient’s health status and care. Case study: An in-depth observational study of a single event or context. Categorization: Organizing experience by using terms which denote sorts or kinds of phenomena. Category-bound activities: Forms of action which are conventionally associated with being a member of the relevant category. Category entitlements: Rights or privileges normatively associated with a classification of someone. Co-constructed accounts: Accounts that are shared and produced by more than one individual in the course of conversation. Cognitive: Pertaining to states of cognition such as beliefs. Cognitive agnosticism: In analysis, setting aside questions of whether cognitive states exist. Cognitive state: A condition which the mind is in at a given moment. Cognitivism: An approach to explaining people’s behavior in terms of their cognitive states. Collaborative identification: Identification of an individual through the turns of two or more people. Community care: Health initiative designed to allow people with mental health needs to live fully within the community. Community resistance: Collective resistance at the level of the community, not the individual. Confabulation: An unintentionally false statement about the world, usually resulting from pathological disorder. Accountability: Responsibility, especially in relation to the speaker’s responsibility in providing a particular account. Action-orientation: The property of talk which directs it towards accomplishing specific outcomes or goals. Aetiology: Recognized cause or origin of disease. Ageism: Prejudice towards others because of their age. Agency: The property of being the source or cause of action or events. Aggression: Behavior intended to cause harm. Agony aunt: Person employed by magazine or similar to respond to readers’ personal letters. Apartheid: A political and legal system of social separation based on race. Archive research: The collection of data from existing sources such as official records. Argument by analogy: Drawing similarities between two different phenomena in order to develop or defend a point of view. Assessment: Production or evaluation of evidence, usually conducted by a professional. Asymmetrical interactions: Episodes in which participants differ in socially relevant ways, e.g., formal position or status. Attitude: An evaluative belief about a social object. See opinion. Attribution: Explaining actions and events by ascribing causes to them. Authoritative discourse: Talk in which a speaker is held to be especially privileged, e.g., as a result of status or role, in terms of the claims that are made. Banal nationalism: Nationalistic talk which relies upon everyday, commonplace forms of expression and which can be contrasted with extreme or overtly xenophobic forms of nationalism. 9781405146586_5_end01.qxd 15/5/08 3:40 PM Page 274